The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

Thought we’d forgotten about Venezuela here on The Remnant? Think again! As prone as Jonah Goldberg is to getting distracted by the finer things of life—Old English dialects, zombie movies, etc.—he’s kept a weather eye fixed southward on our Bolivarian neighbor. Jonah is joined today by James Story, the former ambassador to Venezuela, to take us deep into the recent history of U.S.-Venezuelan relations, Nicolás Maduro, Delcy Rodríguez, a possible democratic transition, the oil deal, the Venezuelan diaspora, Marco Rubio, the boat strikes, the professional foreign service post-DOGE, and Pax Americana.

Show Notes:

—The Dispatch: “The U.S. Boat Strikes, One Year Later”

—MS Now: “The U.S. drone strike in Venezuela marks a dangerous new era”

—Jonah’s LA Times column on the oil deal

—Anthony Scaramucci Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
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Peacefully anchored on the Potomac, the HMS Remnant rocks gently from side to side. Captain Jonah Goldberg, peg leg and all, stands at the prow gazing at the darkening horizon. To the west, the storm clouds of AI apocalypse are gathering. In the east, a midterm squall quickly bears down. In such portentous circumstances, there’s only one thing for a man to do.

Captain Jonah retires to his cabin, lights a cigar, pulls down his dusty copy of Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, and girds himself to talk about Gloria Steinem. Listen in as Jonah ruminates on Bill Buckley’s respectful listening, the freaky Hugging Face incident, Maria Bartiromo, the radicalization of the elderly, Albert Nock’s antisemitism, social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, blood libel vs. blood guilt, Marcionism, Fox News, J.D. Vance, pretextual moral outrage, and confusing conservatives for Republicans.

Show Notes:

—Kevin Williamson on Gloria Steinem in The Dispatch

—NYT’s The Daily on the Hugging Face hack

—Michael Wreszin: The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock

—G-File: “The Rocks and the Orgy”

—Jonah’s NR piece on Albert Nock

—John Carey: The Intellectuals and the Masses

—Thomas C. Leonard: Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era

—Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch: “J.D. and Tucker, Abdul and Hasan”

—Wednesday’s G-File

—Megan McArdle’s book

—Anthony Scaramucci Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
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Who do you call it when American politics has got you scartchin’ your head? That’s right—the Mooch! Anthony Scaramucci joins Jonah Goldberg on today’s Remnant to talk about how the last four presidential administrations brought us to where we are today. Listen in as they dive deep into the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, gerrymandering, Citizens United, China, the George Bush tax cuts, the status of the dollar, immigration capital, tariffs, Donald Trump, and the Marshall Plan.

Show Notes:

—Scaramucci: All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump

—Scott Lincicome: “Testing the ‘China Shock’: Was Normalizing Trade with China a Mistake?”

—Scott Lincicome in The Dispatch: “Getting the ‘China Shock’ Right”

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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Jonah Goldberg is not a bigot. Yet, as we all know, there are exceptions to every rule. The French are one of those exceptions. In particular, Jonah sees the cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ refusal to embrace America’s foremost gift to the civilized world—air conditioning—as an offense against all reason and good sense. Nevertheless, being a fair-minded man, Jonah is willing to give the French a hearing. Having no desire to talk to an actual Frenchy, however, he’s turned to the next best thing: an American who lives in France.

Sweat beading on his forehead, Thomas Chatterton Williams joins The Remnant not only to make apology for his adoptive country’s backward ways, but to dispense his usual authoritative takes on politics and culture, covering race in France, the Rassemblement National, radical Islam, integration, accents, Woke 1, Jason Arday, 80/20 issues, policing speech, The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan, and Jonah’s ideal zombie movie.

Show Notes:

—Francis Dearnley Remnant

—TCW in The Atlantic - “France’s Best Argument Against Racism Isn’t Working”

—Robert Nisbet - The Quest for Community

—TCW - Self-Portrait in Black and White

—Colin Gorrie Remnant

—NYT - “A Decorated Historian’s Research Comes Under Fire”

—Jesse Singal in The Dispatch - “The Cascade of Dysfunction That Helped Doom Jason Arday”

—Jonah’s G-File on The Odyssey

—Tom Holland - Dominion

—Colson Whitehead - Zone One

—Max Brooks: World War Z

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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For the first time in like, 100 years, Jonah Goldberg is bachin’ it up. With no dogs and no wife, The Ruminant is on time and cooking, diving into the Kennedy Center, the Indiana Dunes, Korean War-era debates, Donald Trump as the establishment, the three “M’s” of the midterms, postwar politics, sovereigntism, Canada, John Ratcliffe’s trip to Russia, Vladimir Putin’s designs on Europe, and guilty white liberals.

Show Notes:

—School of War - “Inside America’s Fight for Drone Dominance”

—School of War - “Our Foreign Policy Divide Began with the Korean War”

—Friday’s DisPod

—‘Me-too Republican’ G-File

—Ukraine: The Latest

—Etymologist Remnant

—Wednesday G-File

—Tyler Austin Harper Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices